Are You Holding Tight or Going into Fight or Flight?

Are you experiencing trauma in your marriage...on top of trauma from a life event? Is the pain and hopelessness in your relationship causing your life to feel like all the wheels are falling off?

When you experience a life trauma, whether it’s an individual trauma or trauma that affects both of you (e.g. trauma involving a child or relative, or even a global pandemic), often disruption in your marriage follows. This can leave you feeling despairing, enraged and like God has abandoned you. It often comes unexpectedly and results in feelings of helplessness as efforts to fix the relationship repeatedly fail.

Why does this happen and more importantly, HOW CAN YOU START EXPERIENCING LIFE IN YOUR MARRIAGE AGAIN?

When Todd and I went through a trauma involving one of our children years ago, I started reacting to him almost every time he walked in the room! I would feel anxious and agitated by almost anything he did. Trauma can cause you to be triggered without warning when someone or something reminds you of the trauma. This led to conversations fraught with tension or overall avoidance.

I also had resulting anxiety which caused me to be hyper vigilant-not able to fully relax and connect. Todd responded by numbing out and disengaging...also preventing him from connecting. This was obviously exacerbated by the difficulty of being around a wife who was frequently aggravated by him!! His withdrawal caused increased resentment and agitation in me. Really sucky cycle.

Most of the time, trauma doesn’t just heal on it’s own, especially if it was experienced in the context of relationship. One step you can take to heal is to find people you can trust that can walk you through healing in the context of a safe relationship. When you understand how trauma affects your relationship, you can see that it is not the relationship that is the primary problem; it is the trauma!